FEATUREBlazing trails in water resiliencyDuke develops future best practices in watermanagement for campus utilities.Daniel Allison, Senior Environmental Planner and Business Development Manager,Sustainable Water

Duke University’s stormwater reclamation pond.

Duke University is well-known for many things. Its five national championships in NCAA men’s basketball, nationally recognized medical
school and multitude of scholars
(including nine Nobel laureates) are
just a few things that come to mind.

With the recent completion of a new
campus water supply project and
aggressive future plans to enhance
campus water resiliency, the university is now turning heads in another
category: sustainable water management in district energy systems.

After nearly two years of con-struction, the university completedits innovative stormwater reclama-tion pond this spring. This pond willnot only offset the environmentalimpacts of campus stormwaterrunoff but also serve as a primarymakeup source for Duke’s districtutility systems. The pond is expectedto reduce the campus potable waterfootprint by as much as 100 milliongal annually – nearly 50 percent ofthe total campus heating and cool-ing demand for water, i.e., in coolingtowers and boilers.

With the project now in its commissioning phase, the university has
not stopped thinking about water
resiliency and environmental stewardship. Taking the lead from Emory
University in Atlanta, Ga., Duke is
now investigating how campus-scale
wastewater reclamation can complement its new stormwater reclamation system.

A NEED FOR SUSTAINABLE WATERMANAGEMENT

Duke’s main campus, locatedin Durham, N.C., is no stranger towater stress and drought. In 2007,Durham’s hydraulic service areawitnessed some of the worst droughtconditions ever recorded. Over a two-year period, North Carolina experi-enced record-setting heat waves andwitnessed some of the driest monthsever recorded in state history. Nearlyevery county in North Carolina wasaffected by the drought, and 38 dif-ferent water service providers wereforced to issue water use restrictions.

WHEN DUKE SEARCHED FOR
OPPORTUNITIES TO LESSEN
THE IMPACT OF DROUGHT, THE
CONCEPT OF A CAMPUS POND
FEEDING CENTRAL UTILITY
PLANTS WAS BORN.

With Lake Michie Reservoir
levels 14 ft below capacity and the
Little River nearly 26 ft lower than
typical high water levels, the city
of Durham issued a “Stage IV –
Severe” mandatory water conservation restriction in December 2007.
The restriction set out to reduce
daily water demands by 30 percent throughout the city, with all
businesses required to participate.
Duke’s campus was not exempt
from these restrictions. Despite drastic cuts in extraneous water uses,
the university struggled to reduce
campus water demands without